Gareth Presch, Founder and CEO of the World Health Innovation Summit meets Anne Marie Principe in NYC on the sidelines of #UNGA78 to discuss US and global healthcare.
Anne Marie Principe is a 9/11 survivor and patient advocate and Gareth Presch, Founder and CEO of the World Health Innovation Summit met on the sidelines of UNGA this week to discuss new models of healthcare for the USA.
In 2015 the World Health Innovation Summit CIC was founded by Mr Gareth Presch. Based in the heart of Cumbria [UK] with an international career in healthcare systems, Gareth identified that people in the community would be better supported if they had more access to holistic solutions, in their locality. This is what we call community based person-centred care.
Taking a Good Health & Wellbeing (SDG3) approach to person centred health, Gareth recognised that there were five key cornerstones (Pillars) of which all needed to be supported, at the same time, by the same people: Health, Economy, Education, Environment and Ecosystems.
Gareth felt if people were more aware about how each Pillar impacted their daily lives, and ways in which to better understand them, then this could: 1. Help grow our economies (globally, nationally and locally) 2. Take pressures off our health and social services (staff and resources) 3. Create healthier & happier populations (improve people’s health & wellbeing) 4. Restore the balance to the environment 5. Create equal and safe opportunities 6. Support the most vulnerable people in our society These are now the WHIS Goals.
Gareth also identified a serious gap when it came to the progress of innovation. Many local enterprises and voluntary organisations were already providing exemplar services in their localities - but were working in isolation. His idea was to bring together like-minded people, with the same values, to deliver evidence based solutions across the globe. Collaboration: The key to achieving these goals. A new movement was born: #TogetherWeInspire
Once overheads are covered, the profits are reinvested back into the community. The objectives are to improve people’s health and wellbeing while creating a new ecosystem through a sharing and circular economy. An independent report has demonstrated that every £1 invested in the activities will generate £36 in terms of social return on investment back to the local community.
Together, with the support from an ever-evolving extraordinary international team, WHIS has now become a global platform, connecting thousands of innovators and social entrepreneurs across the world who have the same ethical values and the passion to create a better world now, and for future generations.
The current healthcare systems tend to be based predominantly on a sick-care model, the system is essentially one that waits until we have fallen ill. We face unprecedented challenges with global staff shortages predicted to be 18m by 2030 (BMJ). Healthcare costs (US$ 8.3 trillion or 10% of global GDP ref: WHO) have been rapidly rising over the past few decades. According to the Institute for Global Health Sciences of the University of California-San Francisco (Duff-Brown, 2017), diseases like obesity, cancer, etc. could cost $47 Trillion Dollars by 2030 This unsustainable demand and increase in costs can be largely attributed to the growth in the human population along with a diverse population that results in higher incidence of chronic and multiple conditions. As well as this, a one-size-fits-all approach to health doesn’t work. Both consumer preferences for convenience and affordability are shifting, as well as demand for a more efficient, personalised delivery model is growing.
Additionally, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has dramatically unveiled the health inequalities (Gender, Disability etc) that exist in societies across the world, alongside the fragile state of the world’s health. With climate change the next challenge how will we address these challenges while delivering the UN sustainable development goals? Health and Economics are intrinsically linked as we’ve seen with COVID19.
Gareth has been pioneering this new model of healthcare around the world with various international partners (GGWoA etc) and is the current CEO of the Global Social Prescribing Alliance and is also leading a new initiative on place based impact investment for Health with the Good Economy in the UK (Bringing together the stakeholders - health authorities, investors etc in UK Cities and scaling worldwide through WHIS Healthy Cities Initiative).
Gareth was a member of Pope Francis’s Vatican commission Group 2 looking to the future and was also a member of St George’s House Leadership Fellows. His background includes working as the Chief Officer of the National Haemophilia Council in Ireland and working in the NHS.
Anne Marie and our CEO discussed the opportunities to adopt new models of healthcare in the USA and how they can work together to improve peoples health and wellbeing, creates new and meaningful jobs, strengthens the US health system, creates new and meaningful jobs and leaves no-one behind.
#GlobalHealth #SDGs #911 #HealthForAll #UNGA #nyclimateweek #WHIS